[hamid_1]

I saw the warning about older corded and cordless phones not working with the Ligo Bluewave, but decided to order one anyway. It just arrived 2 days after ordering - that's pretty good service! Only afterwards I found that amazon.co.uk were selling them for the same price with free delivery (5 working days) so I could have saved a further £2.95 by ordering it from Amazon instead of directly from Ligo.

Included in the box, I received the Bluewave unit, RJ11 to RJ11 telephone line cable, a mains adaptor with a 2-pin Euro plug and a 2-pin to UK plug adaptor, plus an instruction manual in German. The company were thoughtful enough to e-mail me a copy of the English quick start guide, which I've attached here, but I didn't really need it. The only thing missing was a BT plug to RJ11 adaptor - the Bluewave phone sockets are the American RJ11 type. If you are using a modern non-BT (e.g. Binatone) cordless phone with it, you don't need an adaptor. You can unplug the the RJ11 to BT cable from the base of your Binatone phone, plug the RJ11 end into the Bluewave line socket, then reconnect the Binatone phone to the Bluewave's phone socket using the included RJ11 to RJ11 telephone line cable.

Notice I said Binatone and not BT. Most modern non-BT phones such as the Binatone ones use only 2 wires connected to the inner two pins of the RJ11. On the other hand, most BT branded phones with detachable cables have all 4 pins connected in the RJ11 plug; the outer two pins are the line and one of the inner two pins is the bell wire connected to a capacitor in the BT master socket. Thus, a lead from a BT phone will not work directly with the Bluewave, you'll need an adaptor with a capacitor inside.

Anyway, I tried it with a suitable RJ11 to BT adaptor and it does accept pulse dialling phones. I tested it with a 1980s BT Tribune phone switched to LD. The Ligo Bluewave automatically converts pulse to tone, enabling the old BT Tribune to dial out on my VoIP line which doesn't support pulse dialling or my mobile phone once I had paired it via Bluetooth.

This setup worked perfectly as long as I had either my VoIP phone line OR my mobile phone connected. When both are connected at the same time, the default setting is that all outgoing calls go via the landline (or in my case, a VoIP line pretending to be a landline). The instructions say that you can change this by dialling 1, then pressing Recall, then dialling the required phone number. This will send the call via mobile phone 1. To use the second or third mobile phone, simply dial 2 or 3 instead of 1. It sounds simple, but here's where I hit a problem.

Of course, most vintage phones don't have a recall button. The vintage BT Tribune does, but the phone has to be set to MFT to enable timed-break recall. The LD or MFE modes use earth recall which won't work with the Bluewave since there are only 2 line wires. Unfortunately, the timed-break recall button on the BT Tribune didn't work either. I tried a modern Binatone phone with timed-break recall, but no joy. All calls kept going to the 'landline'.

Then I remembered that the American phones have a recall button which they call 'Flash', but the break delay is longer than the UK. Since the Ligo Bluewave is essentially a clone of the American X-Link, I wondered if it had been left set up for the USA. Indeed it was. To simulate a Flash recall, I tried tapping the hookswitch for slightly longer and got it to work, but only sometimes.

The myxlink.com website has some software to update the Xlink and adjust its settings. This requires a normal USB printer cable (not supplied, but I already had one.) So I downloaded the Xlink software and installed it, despite the warning that it was for Xlink devices only. I connected the Bluewave box. The Xlink program recognised the Bluewave and started searching for firmware updates, then said "Support for this device ended in 2013". I noticed on the back of my Bluewave box that it was manufactured in 2012 even though I only ordered it 2 days ago. Now I know why it was so cheap - the company are clearing out old stock.

Although the Xlink program would not allow me to update the Bluewave firmware, it did allow me to change the Bluewave's settings. I noticed it was set up for North America as I suspected, so I changed the country setting to Uniited Kingdom, thinking it would solve the recall problem. Instead, it no longer accepted pulse dialling!!! Oh no, I've bricked it!! Luckily I changed the setting back to North America and it worked again as before. The recall problem remained, but I found some Advanced Settings in the Xlink program which allowed me to change the default outgoing line from landline to cellphone 1 which is what I wanted. Also I changed the Flash setting to * (star) so that pressing a number followed by the star button on a tone-dialling phone selects which line to dial out from. This worked more reliably than the flash recall, but needs a tone-dialling phone to switch lines.

I can still use a vintage rotary dial phone but outgoing calls will go via mobile phone 1 unless I temporarily disconnect it from Bluetooth which is very easy to do, in which case calls will go via the VoIP line. This setup suits me fine. Whenever a call is received on either the VoIP line or mobile phone, the vintage phone will ring.

You can test the Bluewave setup by pressing button 1 and 2 at the same time for about 3 seconds. This will put the Bluewave into a test mode where it will ring all the phones connected to the Bluewave for about 30 seconds. Handy if you want to test an old phone without having to ring it from another line. If you have a modern phone with caller display, that will show the Bluewave software version.

There are other settings that can be changed, including the flash duration for the line selection, the pulse timing to compensate for old, badly-adjusted dial phones, and a ringing power boost for phones with mechanical bells. I haven't played around with these as yet - it works well enough.

So I conclude that the LiGo Bluewave is worth buying at a bargain price if you have a vintage dial phone and a landline or VoIP line that doesn't support it, or you want to cancel your landline completely and just use a mobile phone as a virtual landline for your vintage (or modern) phones. Getting both landline and mobile phones to work together required a bit of playing around, but all good fun.